My Initial ideas - chosen artist, permission

Initial ideas for our music video:

Step 1: Deciding on a genre

Hollie, Louise and I all decided that we would like to opt for an artist within the indie, country or pop genre. After deliberation over ideas for locations, props, and hair and makeup we decided to exclude the pop genre from our choices as we felt from our research pop music videos often had many key features which included bright, high budget sets, high key lighting, fast cuts, shallow depth of focus shots, and glamorous, often extravagant hair and makeup which we felt would be harder for us to emulate in our own project. Subsequently we decided on looking for an indie singer as from our research into the indie genre, we noticed that indie music videos tended to be more simplistic, often only having the artist themselves in the video and nothing else. It was also clear from researching into the indie genre that indie music videos are often in outdoor locations, often relating to the lyrics or tone of the song. Another key convention of indie music videos is that they are often unique and different. An example of this would be a music video by indie band Bombay Bicycle Club called 'Feel':

Step 2: Searching for an unsigned artist

The next step for us was to search the internet for an unsigned indie artist. We simply did a google search for 'unsigned artists', 'unsigned British artists' which gave us results such as these:

Next, we decided to search for 'Soundcloud' as we knew it is a popular music sharing platform for unsigned artists looking to get noticed. Upon doing this, we found a female indie artist from Los Angeles USA called AlexMegan. This is her Soundcloud page:

We were particularly attracted to her song called 'Try' which she tagged as 'Indie Rock'. We felt that not only was she a fantastic singer and musician but we thought the lyrics were also relatable.

Step 3: Ideas for shooting

Our next step was to listen to the lyrics more in depth, in order to start thinking about ideas for mis-en-scene and camera shots. On our first few listens of the track we drew up some quick notes, writing down prominent lyrics which we could later relate to in the filming process and also key features of the song:

I then created a Prezi, exploring possible mis-en-scene aspects we could use in our music video:

ARTIST PROFILE: WHO WE CHOSE

Our chosen artist is called Alex Megan and we found her music on the music sharing platform Soundcloud. We then visited Alex Megan's website: http://www.alexmeganmusic.com/home.html

We wrote an email to Alex Megan in order to get permission to use her song.
This is a copy of the email we sent:
Hello Alex Megan, we are three media studies students from the UK and we are doing a music video project in which we need to find an unsigned artist and create a music video with their song. We came across your music on Soundcloud and absolutely loved your song 'Try' and would like to ask permission to use your song for our project. To help us better our project and relate to the song it would be beneficial to us if you could possibly send us a copy of the lyrics. We are fans of your music, good luck in the future and thank you for your time.

Here is a print screen of the email we sent:

Here is a link to the song we have chosen called 'Try':